


(Don’t Quit Your) Daydream

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Nonsense, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 03:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20846735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: “Mind if I join you?”You dip your face to the side a little because you know the angle flatters your features and invite him to sit. He does, flagging the bartender down for another glass of whatever he was drinking before, and then offers a hand and introduces himself.“Captain Lewis Nixon, 101st Airborne.”





	(Don’t Quit Your) Daydream

**Author's Note:**

> I got to talking with **Arwen88** about comedy readerx fic that took a more realistic approach and decided to try and write one. It turned out being more of a weird outside POV character study with hardly any salacious contents whatsoever but I like it anyway so I’m sharing.
> 
> No shade to self-insert or readerx fic, this was just a fun writing exercise and I hope you have as good a time reading it as I did writing it.

Helen is insistent that the only way out of Chippenham is on the arm of a soldier—or, more accurately, with his pay lining your pocket. You’re not sure if you believe her, and you start to say so, but she doesn’t want to hear it.

“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout just  _ any _ soldier,” she clarifies, reeling back in her seat so far that she nearly falls out of it. Helen helped herself to a goodly portion of Mrs. Bailey’s fiercely-guarded cooking sherry before you both hopped the train into London proper and she’s poured several pints of beer in on top of it since then, the most recent of which is slopping messily over her wrist as she gestures to the sea of muddy green uniforms milling about the bar. “It’s gotta be an  _ American _ . They’re the ones wiv’ all the money, see?”

Through the comfortable haze of warm brown ale you explain that you prefer to believe there’s more to love than just a salary. 

“Who said any’fin ‘bout love?” Helen asks and blows an unattractive raspberry into the half-inch of head floating on top of her glass, spitting bubbles all over the bar much to the barman’s sudden and vocal outrage. That puts pretty neatly paid to any further discussion of the matter. 

A handsome young man in one of the dingy green uniforms comes quite dashingly to Helen’s rescue. He mops at the mess with a scrap of fabric he fishes out of his shirt pocket—could be a handkerchief, though you haven’t known many soldiers to have one readily available. He smooth-talks the barman down from his fit of pique while Helen bats her eyes and sways drunkenly into the soldier’s side. 

The soldier says something to the both of you but his accent is so strange and flat that you can’t make out of a word of it. You suspect that Helen can’t, either, but she throws her head back and shrieks with laughter anyway, swatting playfully at his chest while he flushes and grins.

It’s possible, you consider a few moments later as Helen sashays onto the dance floor with beer soaking the sleeve of her blouse and her hand tucked demurely over the soldier’s elbow, that you ought to have tried harder to talk her out of the cooking sherry. You’re feeling fairly steady, yourself, only a little more than halfway through your second pint of the evening, when you notice the fellow peering at you across the bar.

Or,  _ fellows, _ you suppose, since his friend has pinned you with a curious eye from just over his shoulder, too. They’re both soldiers, both Americans by the flags on their arms and the proprietary way they’re standing in the corner, utterly confident that everything under their eye belongs firmly within their dominion despite being thousands of miles from their home soil. You’re not quite sure whether the surfeit of pride makes you want to slap them or salute them, but then isn’t that how it always goes with Americans?

The one in front is just a hair shorter—or maybe he’s slouching. It’s difficult to tell for certain through all the haze of smoke and body heat and the dim yellow light from the bare bulbs humming overhead. He has dark doe-eyes and dark hair falling in a few haphazard curls over his forehead. His mouth is very pink against the beard shading his jaw when he raises a snifter of some amber liquor up to it. You like the way his grin curls when you arch an eyebrow at him, and you start to wonder vaguely if maybe Helen has a point about these American blokes after all.

His friend is taller, or at least has better posture, with upsettingly blue eyes and hair so red it gleams like copper even through the dance hall dinge. He doesn’t look particularly happy to be here, but he ducks his head obligingly when his companion leans back to tell him something and whatever it is summons a tiny, rueful smirk and a quick, fond roll of those stunning eyes.

You try to make yourself look as approachable as possible, tossing your hair over your shoulder and rocking your glass lazily back and forth. You hadn’t  _ really _ been expecting to follow anybody home tonight, but these two present intriguing enough prospects that you’re willing to be convinced. You’re confident that it won’t take much.

Maybe, you think wistfully, hope stirred to a slow simmer by a combination of the beer you’ve been nursing all night long and Helen’s ham-fisted optimism, the mysterious dark soldier will see something in you. Something different than he’s found in other women. Maybe you’ll fall in love, right here, dancing close together in the musty dark.

You wonder what he smells like. Something strong and spicy and warm, you think, but with the crisp bite of an alpine forest. You imagine what that rough jaw might feel like, brushing against your own, or perhaps trailing a line of hot kisses down your throat. A ripple of gooseflesh erupts up your back and a tiny spark of heat flickers for a second in your belly. You glance back over and risk a smile.

The dark-haired soldier nudges his elbow into the redhead’s side, tosses back the last dregs of his drink, and starts picking his way through the crowd toward the bar and, incidentally, you. 

You discreetly adjust the straps of your brassiere, hiking your bust a little higher, and smooth your skirt down your thighs. You take a moment to thank the Lord you decided to wear one of your few remaining pairs of sheer silk stockings rather than soaking in a bath of black tea and hoping the lads wouldn’t take a smooth shin as the wrong sort of invitation. Not that the lack of appropriate underthings seems to be at all hampering Helen, who’s dangerously near flashing her drawers to the whole of the assembled American military, high-kicking as she is. You simply prefer a man to have to work a little harder for your affections.

The approaching soldier hardly has the look of a cart horse, but from the sly glint in his eye you’re willing to bet he could pull off an expert maneuver with very little fuss, which is a level of competence you appreciate in your potential paramours. The soldier draws up next to you, gestures at the seat that Helen recently vacated, and asks in a much more palatable American lilt, “Mind if I join you?”

You dip your face to the side a little because you know the angle flatters your features and invite him to sit. He does, flagging the bartender down for another glass of whatever he was drinking before, and then offers a hand and introduces himself. 

“Captain Lewis Nixon, 101st Airborne.”

He smells just like you imagined—what little whiff you can catch under the overwhelming aura of booze and smoke, anyway. He’s handsome enough that you’re willing to forgive the unpleasant perfume. Plenty of soldiers smell worse. 

You tuck your fingers over Captain Nixon’s and tell him your name. He repeats it back, grin curling just the same way it did a moment ago as he assures with a gentle squeeze of his hand, “It suits you.”

You tell him it’s a pleasure to make his acquaintance and call him by his rank. He chuckles around a mouthful of his freshly-delivered beverage, which you now know is scotch.

“Please,” Captain Nixon corrects, still grinning, “call me Lew. I don’t stand much on formality.”

It’s an unusual trait in a military officer and you find it strangely refreshing. You tell him as much and he shrugs.

“All shakes out the same on the wrong end of a Luger,” Lew says, taking a philosophical swig from his glass.

You feel your eyebrows climb toward your hairline, but you smile anyway. It’s a bit of an uncouth statement to make to a young lady; a tad too brusque, perhaps, but pickings are dismally slim in Chippenham and you’re not too proud to put up with a little dark humor in the interest of seeing this thing through. You ask Lew about his service and he gives you a vague, abbreviated rundown of his favorite parts, the lion’s share of which seem to involve liberating various spirits from the many homes and businesses scattered all across the highly contested territory of northern France.

He plows through another three glasses of scotch in short order and informs you intently after the very last sip, “You look just like Betty Grable,” which is a funny thing to say given that your hair isn’t remotely the right color. He blinks blearily up at you with that slyly curling smirk and then blinks past you and flags the barman for another, grin sprawling even wider.

He is, you realize, absolutely pished. You thank him even so and are about to suggest taking a turn around the dance floor when his friend, the redhead, comes sidling up at his shoulder.

“Alright there, Nix?” he asks as Lew swivels precariously around in his chair to greet him. 

His voice is at a slightly higher pitch than you thought it would be, but you’re not too fussed. You mentally recompose the fantasies you started to indulge sometime around Lew’s second glass of scotch, wherein the redhead might sweep in to demand his turn at your attentions and a mild but supremely flattering fracas would ensue.

There would perhaps be some harsh words, a hearty shove or two, maybe even a wild, haymaking swing that passed just barely over someone’s ducking head, like in a film. A proper row would certainly threaten, but you would manage to talk sense into them both at the very last moment, convince one or the other that his compatriot was the more deserving of your company for the evening. Or maybe, if you were very lucky, that they  _ both _ ought to accompany you home.

You’ve never had two men at once, or even seen two men together in that way, really, though Helen  _ swears _ she heard from Mary Jeswick when she was home on leave from the WAAFs that that sort of thing happens all the time among the troops.

(“Haven’t got any birds about, right?” Helen had explained sagely around the slowly dwindling fag end. “It’s all blokes, and they ain’t monks, right? Not most of ‘em anyway. And if all you got’s a fella and you ain’t mixed a batch in a right while, you’ll batter him up just as well, won’cha?”

You had asked her if it was the same for women and she had scrunched up her nose, considered for a second, and shrugged, “D’no why it wouldn’t be. Girl’s gotta get her jollies one way or ano’ver, don’t she?”)

The idea of seeing the two of them together so thrills and captivates you that you’re a million miles away—sandwiched very pleasantly between two pairs of brawny, sweat-slicked arms—when Lew confirms, “Just  _ swell, _ Captain.” 

You startle badly, but neither Lew nor his friend seems to notice. Lew reaches up to pat directly at the center of his friend’s chest. The redhead allows it but the look of judgment he flicks in Lew’s direction is as scathing as it is affectionate. “I’ve made the acquaintance of a very fine young lady.”

The other soldier looks over at you for a brief second, brow arched and smirk tilted conspiratorially, and agrees, “I can see that. Would you care to introduce us or were you planning to forfeit  _ all _ your dignity before I have to carry you out of here?”

“Joke’s on you for thinking I have any dignity left,” Lew responds amiably, but he offers his friend your name and styles the much more stiffly-pressed soldier as one Captain Richard Winters, also of the 101st Airborne Regiment, with a minimum of pageantry. 

“You can call  _ him _ Captain,” Lew invites with a wink. “Really drives him wild.”

“Dick will do just fine,” the captain corrects. His eyes are somehow even bluer up close and you flush all the way to your hair when he leans in to shake your hand and provides you a small, pleased smile.

You stammer your way through a few minutes of small talk. Dick appears to be markedly clearer of mind than Lew, who is melting into a whisky-soaked puddle against the bartop, chin in hand and dark, hooded eyes swimming lazily between your face and Dick’s as he silently spectates your conversation. Dick tells you what he can about the work they’ve been doing—which is to say, not altogether much—and about how dearly he enjoys nearby Aldbourne, and his host family, and the quaint little town church.

He’s quite a catch, this Captain Winters, and you nearly swoon right off your stool when he rests his fingers delicately against your wrist and asks politely, “Can I get you another drink, miss?”

You hope he can’t feel the pounding of your pulse under your skin. You must look a tomato, you think as you ask him breathlessly for another pint of lager. Dick orders it without issue, taking a moment after he does to press a hand to Lew’s back and lean in to murmur against his ear, “Still with us?”

Lew, who had been drooping nearer and nearer to the bartop with every passing second, stirs and straightens up, slurring not especially reassuringly, “M’up! I’m up.” He smacks his lips and takes another pull off his half-empty glass before arching an eyebrow at Dick and reaching over to rest his hand atop yours. It’s big and warm and surprisingly soft, for a soldier. You wonder boldly what it might feel like exploring other places, even as Lew admonishes Dick, “Don’t tell me you’ve been neglecting this delightful creature on my account.”

Dick rolls his eyes and looks at you again in that dry, conspiratorial fashion. You risk a smirk and hope that the heat in your face isn’t already bleeding ruddy blotches into the skin of your throat. Not for the first time you curse your mother and the damnable complexion you’ve inherited that communicates your every thought as thoroughly as a signal flare. Either way, Dick doesn’t seem to mind, and nor does Lew for that matter, who’s stroking over your knuckles absently with his thumb. His fingers are long and blunt with neatly manicured nails.

You shift a little in your seat, just enough to make your knee brush against his, and Lew flickers a wink in your direction.

“My mother raised me better than that,” Dick assures, and you smile at him. He claps Lew on the back and continues, “I just need you at least part-way conscious for the walk back. If I let you nod off now we’ll never make it.”

You bring your free hand demurely up to your chest and frown as winsomely as you can manage, inquiring after the distance to their lodgings for the evening. It’s as forward a pass as you’re comfortable making, and while Lew very clearly picks up on it—from the glint in his eye and the slow, sensual way he licks the whisky off his lower lip—it’s equally obvious that Dick doesn’t, politely assuring that even if they missed the last truck out it would be a manageable walk.

“Manageable,” Lew mimics with a snort. “Three hours on foot, that walk, and he calls it manageable.”

“We’ve walked further than that,” Dick dismisses and Lew arches an eyebrow.

“Sure, on a battle march,” he agrees waspishly. “Or that time the General made us haul our sorry asses all the way to Atlanta in five days by way of the goddamned swamplands.”

The corners of Dick’s thin mouth turn down and he chides Lew under his breath for resorting to such coarse language in front of a lady. You don’t meet many proper gentlemen in Chippenham these days and you find yourself demurely flustered by his thoughtfulness at the same time that you’re sorely tempted to have a laugh at the expense of Lew’s flatly unimpressed face. They’re a riotous pair, and handsome, both—an oddly matched set, like a couple of dishes with patterns that appear different at a glance but prove upon closer study just similar enough to mark them as belonging to one another. You suggest hopefully that they might allow you to escort them to the depot to await their ride, one last run at fulfilling the daydreams swirling hazily around in your imagination, but Dick won’t hear of it.

“Oh, we couldn’t,” he insists. “What kind of men would we be if we let a young lady walk back through the dark by herself?”

For a split second, you nearly recommend that one of them stay. Or both. The boarding house where you and Helen usually take rooms here in the city only allows women, and the matron who runs the place is notoriously stringent in regards to that particular rule, but certainly there must be somewhere you could go. Helen isn’t above seeking her pleasure in a barn, and while Helen generally lives a measurably wilder life than you prefer, you think you might be willing to suffer the indignity of picking hay out of your hair for a week in exchange for the pleasure of watching these two strip out of their awful, muddy green uniforms, one at a time or side-by-side.

In the end, you try not to let your longing show too indecorously in your face as you watch Dick summon the barman and try to settle Lew’s tab. Lew, for his part, is having none of it, protesting loudly and patting clumsily at the pockets of his shirt, presumably in search of a billfold. By the time he comes up with one, Dick is waiting patiently with his hands folded behind his back, having already paid, and the barman has wandered off to serve a gaggle of uproariously laughing soldiers clustered together at the other end of the bar.

“Betty,” Lew says, and you glance over expectantly, though you and Dick both well know that Betty isn’t your name. Lew must be drunker than you thought he was, because aside from forgetting who you are, he slips out of his chair and nearly tumbles straight over onto his face. Dick catches him with a practiced arm hooked around his waist and heaves him back upright, where Lew totters for a second and then reaches for your hand. “It was a pleasure,” he says, and leans in to smear a sloppy kiss over your knuckles. The feeling of his mouth over your skin stirs that little spark in your belly and you file the memory away to revisit later, in a more private locale, perhaps with a minor revision as to the amount of saliva involved.

“Likewise,” you agree, and discreetly wipe your hand off on your skirt as soon as Lew releases it while Dick struggles not to laugh. He shares another of those small, secretive smiles and inclines his head. It’s no kiss to the hand but you’re a woman of fertile imagination and you’re sure you’ll get some mileage out of it, even so.

Dick wishes you a pleasant evening and turns to guide Lew through the throng, one hand curled over his shoulder and the other pressed against the small of his back, accommodating for each staggering step as Lew regales him flamboyantly about some topic or another, voice lost to the din. In the corner, Helen is jitterbugging her way around a makeshift dance floor. The man she’s dancing with tugs her in with a flourish and her skirt flares like a pinwheel. He dips her easily and Helen comes up laughing, face flushed and hair wild as she shrieks delightedly to the ceiling, “God bless America!”

The soldiers all cheer and clap and whistle while you sigh into the remainder of your pint and lean your elbow against the sticky bartop, alone.

Right, you think. God bless America indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
